Barbara Brownie

In May 2013, the FSB expelled an American diplomat on the grounds that he was spying for the CIA. Listed among the alleged spy’s suspicious possessions were ‘means of altering appearance’. It was later revealed that this disguise kit contained a variety of wigs and sunglasses. These paraphernalia were so ill-fitting that they seemed to belong in a comedy performance, but they provoked some serious debate. Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme, former CIA operative, Robert Baer, described the thick-rimmed glasses and stick-on moustaches that he and his colleagues had worn to break up facial contours. The aim of these disguises was to make people remember ‘something other than the face’. An individual’s identity is bound up in his or face more so than any other body part. Passport photographs, portraits, and other images related to personal identity, tend to feature the face. It is for this reason that criminal photo-fits tend to feature only the head, and why criminals’ disguises concentrate on concealing the face and head. The problem with any mask or facial disguise is that it immediately marks someone out as a wrong-doer. The mere act of wearing a mask may itself be considered morally questionable, as it is a deception of sorts. The ‘mask has come to connote something disingenuous, something false’. It is overtly a disguise. David Napier observes that it is this sense of an incomplete identity that drives audiences to seek out the secret alternative identity hidden underneath. The mask is ‘known to have no inside’ and this ‘invit[es] the audience to peer behind the mask’. This paper will explore the problem of the mask and its use in disguise. While effective disguise often necessitates the use of a mask (or other artefacts that distort or conceal the face), facial disguises often heighten the observer’s sense of curiosity about the identity beneath. Taking recent and historical examples of physical disguise, the paper will identify why the mask is the cornerstone of disguise, and simultaneously the disguise’s greatest point of vulnerability.Non peer reviewe

Barbara Brownie, Jayne Smith, and Rebecca Thomas, ‘Temperature testing leading to ongoing curriculum evolution in Creative Arts modules’. Presentation to HEA Annual Conference 2017: Generation TEF: Teaching in the Spotlight, 4 July – 7 July 2017, Manchester, UK.

Part 1: Mapping the Field: Categories of Kineticism Chapter 1: What is Kineticism?Chapter 2: Global v. Local Perception, and the problem with Global BiasChapter 3: Local Kineticism and Fluctuating Identity Part 2: Issues in Transforming Typography Chapter 4: Illusory Space: The Page and Screen as a Virtual EnvironmentChapter 5: Legibility and Asemisis in Fluid Typography Part 3: Case Studies Chapter 6: Fluid Branding: Channel 4 and its imitators Chapter 7: Telling Titles: The credit sequences of Kyle Cooper and his peersChapter 8: Visual Poetry Conclusion Bibliography Appendix

List of Illustrations Introduction Part 1: Origins and Evolution Chapter 1: Superman: Codifying the Superhero Wardrobe Physical Labour and the Construction of Masculinity Performance in Combat The Costume as Biography Superman the Brand The Archetype and his Imitators Chapter 2: Identity, Role and The Mask The Mask and Issues of Identity The Identity of the Mask Power, Authority and the Privileged Few Face-ism How Dress Defines Role The Deceit of the Masquerade Chapter 3: Evolution and Adaptation: Form v. Function 'Sucked Into Silliness' Real-life References: The historical and the sporting. Technology and Utility The Pursuit of Credibility: Hyperrealism and assemblage The Decline of the Costume Part 2: Identities and Ideals Chapter 4: Wearing The Flag: Patriotism and globalization Stars and Stripes... and Spandex Conflicted Identities: Nation v. Race Exoticism and Primitivism in Batman Incorporated Chapter 5: Dressing Up, Dressing Down: A Spectacle of Otherness, and the Ordinariness of the Civilian Alter-ego Performing Ordinariness Playing to the Reader Unmasking Clark Kent Self-Objectification Method in the Masquerade Chapter 6: Channelling The Beast Physiognomy and Anthrozoomorphism The Bird Men Ritual and the Animal Spirit Part 3: Harsh Realities Chapter 7: Superheroes and the Fashion of Being Unfashionable Fashion Outsiders The Gender Divide The Cycle of Superhero Fashion Evolution into Eternity Chapter 8: Superhero Cosplay Participatory Fandom / Imaginative Reconstruction 'I'm your biggest fan': Competition and Authenticity Spectatorship and the Cosplay Spectacle Sewing and Making: Masculinity and Manufacture Chapter 9: Real-life Superheroes Masked Vigilantes and The Reality of Costumes Masks and Manifestos Parent Power Part 4: Case Studies Introduction to Case Studies Chapter 10: Watchmen Deconstructing the Costume Men without Humanity Masks without Men Chapter 11: Iron Man Who is Iron Man? Automated Dressing The Hyper-abled Hero Chapter 12: X-Men Uniforms and Unity The Yellow 'X': Marking the Mutant 'Other' Notes Bibliography

Current understanding of the nature of type assumes it to be static, with properties of form and colour. With the introduction of temporal media, typographic artefacts may additionally have properties of behaviour. Temporal media allow type to perform and evolve. ‘Fluid’ (Kac, 1997) type, as it appears in onscreen, is ‘dramatized’ (Helfand, 1997). A single form may present multiple letters through processes of morphing, rotation or deconstruction, and multiple forms may present a single letter through processes of reorganisation. Analysis of such artefacts not only requires us to re-evaluate our understanding of the nature of type, but also to reassess the notion that a single letterform may only have a single identity. Referencing examples of typographic performance, this paper will discuss the nature of fluid type, and propose that current typographic theory may need to adapt in order to respond to the introduction of temporal media.

Theorists including Michael Worthington (1998) and Jessica Helfand (1994) recognise in temporal media the capacity to add additional dimensions to typography. ‘Type in motion’ is indeed an established field of typographic practice. In most cases, however, texts fail to acknowledge that temporal media allow type to do more than just ‘move’. Contemporary examples feature typography that evolves, or exhibits behaviour, further blurring the boundary between image and type. At present, no method of analysis, or even terminology, exists to sufficiently identify and describe this kind of typography. Perhaps the most appropriate term, ‘fluid’ typography, was identified by Eduardo Kac (1996) as typography that presents different identities over time. This aptly describes the typography that is currently encountered, for example, in MPC’s Channel 4 identity, in which the figure ‘4’ is constructed from environmental objects. These objects are, for a time, pictorial (a part of the landscape), then their identity changes; they become abstract components of a letterform. Kac’s term, however, was never intended for such artefacts. It was formulated specifically for his holographic poetry, in which letterforms appear to change when the viewer changes his or her physical location relative to the hologram. Similar features can now be seen in contemporary, digital examples, such as the fluid, typographic works of artists such as Dan Waber and Komninos Zervos. Yet these examples go further than Kac’s own works. They present forms in flux that are, in a moment, text, and in another, image. This presentation will propose a definition of ‘fluid’ typography that can incorporate this new form of temporal typography, and observe how theorists have, as yet, failed to acknowledge this unique hybrid of text and image. I will ask how typographic theory can be updated to allow for such type, propose new terminology to distinguish varying forms of temporal typography, and propose methodologies for the analysis of ‘fluid’ typographic artefacts.Non peer reviewe

Fluid typographic forms (letters, numbers and other characters), which transform over time to present new identities, are employed in a new kind of temporal typography. These forms, and the behaviours they exhibit, are most commonly seen in temporal media, including television idents, credit sequences and typographic animation. However, fluidity is dependent upon characteristics that were developed historically, from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. It has become possible to retrospectively identify the ways that historical developments anticipated fluid transformation in temporal typography. Some categories of fluid behaviour would be impossible if it were not for the concept of the letter as malleable, as a three-dimensional object, or as modular. These characteristics permit processes, or fluid behaviours, through which a new identity is introduced to a changing form. This article demonstrates that these three characteristics are reflected in three historical developments:...

Barbara Brownie, Jayne Smith, Rebecca Thomas, ‘In Another Instant: Focus and Interaction in Creative Arts Learning’, paper presented at the European Conference on eLearning (ECEL), University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK, 29-30 October, 2015.

Design practice has historically been constrained by the assumption that designed objects, including clothing, will be made and worn in Earth gravity. The notion that designed objects have an upright state has influenced common approaches to design, including the tendency towards depiction and presentation of designed objects in elevation view, which, for fashion, is frequently understood in terms of silhouette. However, those who have experienced weightlessness, either in space travel or on board reduced-gravity aircraft, describe a post-gravity experience that prompts them to revisit these assumptions and consider the extent to which future commercial space travel will liberate creative practitioners to operate at all angles and orientations. As we enter the commercial space age, fashion will be increasingly worn in a variety of gravitational conditions, and the dressed body will therefore be encountered at a variety of orientations, showcasing views of garments that are not often...

ABSTRACT Disguise – the substitution of one identity for another – is a deliberate act of construction and an elimination of self. Through costume, signs of self are concealed and erased, and in their place appears an apparently complete alternative identity. Although dress is typically aspirational, reflecting a desire to imitate those of higher socio-economic status, this article observes that there are occasions on which it is desirable to use costume to reduce status, and to escape the perceived pressures and responsibilities of social or economic power. In trans-status disguise, it is necessary to abandon all outward indicators of individuality and status: to perform ordinariness.Performance of ordinariness is a means to an end: a tool to enable behaviour that would otherwise be inappropriate or impossible. Inspired by Jacob Riis’s How the Other Half Lives, nineteenth-century journalists used costume to experience life in the poorest sections of society with the aim of increasing trans-status empathy. In screen-based narratives, a disguise can often be pivotal to a plot, particularly since, in these primarily visual media, costume is a key identifying feature of any character. Taking as examples, Coming to America, Superman and The Saint, this article observes how costume permits a perceived lowering of status, which in turn enables liberation. In particular, it will propose that there are parallels between the social experiments of nineteenth-century journalists and the fictional narratives of twentieth-century television and cinema.

Audio description guidelines recommend the prioritization of the actions of the protagonist. While this approach may be appropriate in many cases, it may also deprive visually impaired viewers of an experience equivalent to that of sighted viewers, particularly during scenes that relate the experiences of onlookers or voyeurs. In descriptions of striptease, for example, actions and gestures are prioritized to such an extent that there is often very little description of the appearance of the body that is revealed. Descriptive Video Work’s audio description for the climactic striptease of The Full Monty (Peter Cattaneo, 1997) describes only the actions of the male striptease troupe, and denies visually impaired viewers the erotic pleasure of hearing descriptions of any of the performers’ bodies. Indeed, there is no explicit indication that bare torsos have been revealed at all, leaving the audience to infer their appearance from the description of the removal of shirts. This aural experience offers sighted and visually impaired viewers two contrasting experiences of the scene: the sighted viewer is positioned as if part of the fictional on-screen audience, and invited to gaze at the bodies on display; the visually-impaired audience, however, misses the opportunity for voyeurism, and instead is directed to consider actions as an actor.

This paper will explore how current OfCom/ITC and equivalent guidelines (ACB in the USA and MAA in Australia) result in contrasting aural and visual experiences, and so fail to deliver equivalent experiences for visually impaired viewers. I will ask how it may be possible for an audio description to replicate the experience of sighted viewers, not the experience of protagonists on screen.

Call for Papers: Deception: 2nd International Conference
Mansfield College, Oxford
20-21 July 2015

We are accepting late submissions for the 2nd Deception conference at Mansfield College, Oxford, as details of the event have changed. For full details, see: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/hostility-and-violence/deception/details/

In particular, we invite papers on spy fiction and tales of deception in film and TV, treason and betrayal (e.g. Wikileaks), and GCHQ’s recently leaked documents on ‘The Art of Deception’.

New deadline: 27 April 2015

Call for Presentations:
We have entered a ‘post-truth era’, in which, historian Daniel J. Boorstin notes, ‘believability’ has become an acceptable substitute for ‘truth’, and ‘manifold deceptions of our culture’ are difficult to separate from ‘its few enduring truths’. In this era, communities and individuals may feel routinely duped, cheated or betrayed. Leaked documents detailing GCHQ’s deception tactics, WikiLeaks and revelations about large-scale deception, contribute to the perception that there exists a culture of lying. Though truth may be considered intrinsically valuable, deception may sometimes be useful or necessary. Sometimes there is pleasure in the spectacle of deception.

Deception is not limited to human activity. It is also practiced by animals, plants, diseases, and machines. It is an issue that transcends disciplines, affecting communities, individuals and objects.

This inter-disciplinary conference will address artefacts and practices that challenge truthfulness, authenticity or reliability. Deception is practiced in many forms, affecting societies and individuals. It may be a vital survival tool, a means of gaining unfair advantage, or a pleasurable spectacle. This conference invites delegates to explore how deception is manifested in their discipline, or how multi-disciplinary notions of deception affect their field. Proposals for papers and presentations are invited on topics related to, but not limited to:

The Science and Philosophy of Lying:
- lie detection
– the ethics of lying
– the politics of lying
– codes of conduct

Spies and Spying:
- undercover operations
– spy fiction
– spycraft, gadgets and toolkits
– British intelligence organisation GCHQ’s leaked documents on ‘The Art of Deception’

False Identities:
- disguises
– costumes and masquerade
– aliases and pseudonyms
– anonymity

The Spectacle of Deception:
- theatrical illusion
– virtual reality
– CGI

Psychological and Medical Deceptions:
- self-deception
– placebos
– diseases in disguise

Fakes and Forgeries:
- false signs of authenticity
– the lives and practices of forgers
– hoaxes
– red herrings and decoys
– false evidence

Betrayal:
- whistleblowers and defectors
– trust and distrust
– infidelity
– fractured expectations

Dishonest Media:
- photo-manipulation and retouching
– ‘black’ propaganda
– plagiarism
– misrepresentation

The Steering Group welcomes the submission of proposals for short workshops, practitioner-based activities, performances, and pre-formed panels. We particularly welcome short film screenings; photographic essays; installations; interactive talks and alternative presentation styles that encourage engagement.

What to Send:
Proposals will also be considered on any related theme. 300 word a proposals should be submitted byFriday 3rd April 2015. If a proposal is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper of no more than 3000 words should be submitted by Friday 12th June 2015. Proposals should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:
a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords.

E-mails should be entitled: Deception 2 Proposal Submission.

All abstracts will be at least double blind peer reviewed. Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We acknowledge receipt and answer to all proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in a week you should assume we did not receive your proposal; it might be lost in cyberspace! We suggest, then, to look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

Organising Chairs:
Barbara Brownie: b.k.1.brownie@herts.ac.uk
Rob Fisher: decep2@inter-disciplinary.net <mailto:decep1@inter-disciplinary.net>

"‘Asemic writing’ is defined by Tim Gaze as a collection of forms ‘which appears to be writing’, while ‘having no worded meaning’. Asemic forms may bear the hallmarks of writing, either through their shape or organization, but have no specific verbal signification. These signs are typically abstract, geometric glyphs, arranged in linear sequence so as to invite the act of reading, but that do not allow verbal interpretation. The relationship between literacy and asemic signs has been established historically, and many past examples of asemic writing (sometimes described as ‘pseudo-writing’) can be found in historical artefacts which convey a sense of status, power and exclusivity through asemic decoration.

Asemic language appears within images in Shaun Tan’s wordless picturebook, The Arrival (2006).  Tan uses this pseudo-writing to represent a generic foreign language, with the aim of showing a sense of alienation. These images demonstrate that language, when it is not understood, can be isolating. In other examples, asemic writing is used to convey a sense of otherness. Dylan Horricks (2014) uses shading within speech balloons to describe ‘words [that] were not understood by us’. Here, the use of a speech balloon signifies verbal communication, though no verbal meaning is present.

Numerous texts contain decipherable alien languages, painstakingly developed by linguists (such as Christine Schreyer’s Kryptonian). Such sign systems can be directly transliterated, offering the readers the challenge of deciphering messages. However, other comics, ranging from Peanuts to the X-Men, embrace asemisis. These present alien or animal languages that are never intended to contain decipherable messages, and instead convey a sense of otherness through the impossibility of understanding.

This paper will explore the motivations for featuring asemic signs in comics and graphic novels, focusing in particular on Shaun Tan’s The Arrival, and The X-Men, seeking to consider how meaning is achieved through meaninglessness in indecipherable symbols.
"

"‘Dressing-up’ has often been seen as a gendered activity. In particular, costuming – the design and creation of costumes – has been viewed as a female pursuit. However, contemporary events and artefacts frame dressing-up in contexts that are more acceptable to male audiences. As a result, a new generation of men are becoming more engaged with costume. In multiplayer online games (such as World of Warcraft), the dressing and preparation of the avatar is a significant part of the player’s gaming experience. Fron et al. observe that male gamers devote a lot of time and effort into developing their costume, justified by their use of terminology such as ‘gear’ rather than ‘costume’. Such terminology suggests that the avatar’s wardrobe is primarily a matter of function rather than style.

If costume can be justified as a functional object, particularly in that is associated with the very masculine act of combat, it can be distanced from feminine acts of vanity, and childish acts of play. The notion of costume as functional object has also made the practice of dressing-up more acceptable to mainstream cinema audiences. Christopher Nolan took great pains to justify Bruce Wayne’s costume in his recent cinema incarnations of Batman (The Dark Knight, 2008, and its sequels), in which the Batman costume is depicted as pseudo-utilitarian. The superhero genre also presents numerous masculine characters actively involved in the design and creation of costume, including Spider Man, who is seen sewing his own suit. In sci-fi and fantasy fandom, fans acquire cultural capital through the design and creation of costume. Through accuracy and authenticity in costume, a cosplayer may position himself as an authority. The organised ‘masquerades’ that take place at cosplay events add a masculine element of competition to this traditionally feminine act.
"

The title sequence relies heavily on typography and lettering, to the extent that some sequences are entirely typographic. Temporal typography, as it appears in title sequences, forms a bridge between the reality of production (in reference to the cast and crew), and the fiction of the film itself. It achieves this connection by treating typography as a cinematic subject, which is capable of performance and pictorial communication, as will be explored here.

The title sequence may share core motifs with other promotional material, and therefore forms part of the branding of a film. It helps to reinforce the visual identity of the film’s brand, and to establish a connection between the brand and the narrative that is the core of the film.

Since the title sequence serves several purposes, the typography itself must be equally complex, and often exhibits transformation between picture and image to facilitate connections between the film and its brand, and between production and content (fact and fiction).

In fluid typography, letterforms emerge from apparently abstract or pictorial arrangements, challenging viewer’s assumptions about the nature and meaning of on-screen objects.  Increasingly in film credit sequences and television idents, this fluidity occurs in architectural environments. Computer-generated cityscapes, which initially present themselves as architectural, become typographic as letters and words emerge from the scene.
Directly-filmed and CGI models of cities can be treated as navigable environments, containing verbal meaning which may be revealed through kineticism or parallax. MPC’s Channel 4 idents (2004-2013), in which the figure ‘4’ emerges from computer-generated architectural environments, and the opening credits for Sin City (2005), in which an aerial view of skyscrapers reveals them to be arranged as a collection of letters, initially present architectural landscapes. In spectacles comparable to theatrical illusion, viewers are invited to seek out verbal meaning within these cityscapes.
This paper will apply Eduardo Kac’s discussions of ‘fluid signs’ (originally applied to holographic poetry) in the reading of credit sequences and idents. Fluid events will be compared to theatrical illusion, in which the illusionsit’s tools – the ‘city’ – are shown capable of spectacular and unexpected transformation. The emergence of letterforms from these scenes will be explored as a paradigm shift, from city to text.

In May 2013, the FSB expelled an American diplomat on the grounds that he was spying for the CIA. Listed among the alleged spy’s suspicious possessions were ‘means of altering appearance’. It was later revealed that this disguise kit contained a variety of wigs and sunglasses. These paraphernalia were so ill-fitting that they seemed to belong in a comedy performance, but they provoked some serious debate. Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, former CIA operative, Robert Baer, described the thick-rimmed glasses and stick-on moustaches that he and his colleagues had worn to break up facial contours. The aim of these disguises was to make people remember ‘something other than the face’.
An individual’s identity is bound up in his or face more so than any other body part. Passport photographs, portraits, and other images related to personal identity, tend to feature the face. It is for this reason that criminal photo-fits tend to feature only the head, and why criminals’ disguises concentrate on concealing the face and head. The problem with any mask or facial disguise is that it immediately marks someone out as a wrong-doer. The mere act of wearing a mask may itself be considered morally questionable, as it is a deception of sorts. The ‘mask has come to connote something disingenuous, something false’. It is overtly a disguise. David Napier observes that it is this sense of an incomplete identity that drives audiences to seek out the secret alternative identity hidden underneath. The mask is ‘known to have no inside’ and this ‘invit[es] the audience to peer behind the mask’.
This paper will explore the problem of the mask and its use in disguise. While effective disguise often necessitates the use of a mask (or other artefacts that distort or conceal the face), facial disguises often heighten the observer’s sense of curiosity about the identity beneath. Taking recent and historical examples of physical disguise, the paper will identify why the mask is the cornerstone of disguise, and simultaneously the disguise’s greatest point of vulnerability.

Fashion is often described as asserting or reinforcing social or professional bonds, but rarely is such a fixed bond established as when garments physically link one body to another. We may be familiar with shared garments in dramatic costume, as in Chinese dragons or pantomime horses, but there are also examples of everyday garments designed to contain multiple bodies. Examples include Lucy Orta’s collective wear, Dana Karwas and Karla Karwas’ Party Dress worn by five women simultaneously, and Aamu Song and Johan Olin’s Dance Shoes for Father and Daughter. These garments not only assert relationships between wearers, but make that relationship inescapable by physically binding bodies together. By linking or binding bodies, these shared garments restrict movement, and ensure choreographed motion, forcing the wearers to move as one. This establishes a hierarchy, placing one wearer in control of motion, and others in subservient positions. This paper will discuss the wearing of shared garments, focusing in particular on how forced choreography affects issues of identity, interpersonal relationships, and social hierarchy. It will observe how shared garments may challenge or reinforce ideas about the relationship between fashion and identity, and will explore the social motives behind the design of such garments.

Today, we are living in the New Space Age, where mass commercial space travel is almost within our grasp. This otherworldly possibility has opened up new cultural images of space, both real and fictional, and has caused fashion design and spacesuit engineering to intersect in new, exciting ways. Spacewear traverses this uncharted territory by exploring the changing imagination of space in fashion-and fashion in space-from the first Space Age to the 21st century. Exploring how space travel has stylistically and technologically framed fashion design on earth and how we need to revisit established design practices for the weightless environment, Spacewear connects the catwalk and the space station.

This book draws together speculative fantasies in sci-fi films such as Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey, with the engineered spacesuits Biosuit, and the NASA Z-2 and with catwalk interpretations by the likes of Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, André Courrèges, and Iris van Herpen. While the development of commercial space agencies has led to new concerns for style in garments for outer space that re-think fundamental design principles such as drape, high fashion has experimented with new possibilities for weightlessness that extend far beyond the 1960s vision of Space Age metallic fabrics and helmet-style headwear.

Brownie takes the reader on a fascinating journey from fantasy to function and to form, deepening our understanding of this new category of fashion that is prompting new approaches to garment design and construction both on earth and in outer space.

The act of undressing has a multitude of meanings, which vary dramatically when this commonly private gesture is presented for public consumption. This ground-breaking book explores the significance of undressing in various cultural and social contexts.

As we are increasingly obsessed with dress choices as signifiers of who we are and how we feel, an investigation into what happens as we remove our clothes has never been more pertinent. Divided into three main sections, 'Politics', 'Tease' and 'Clothes Without Bodies', Acts of Undressing discusses these key themes through an in-depth and eclectic mix of case studies including flashing at Mardi Gras, the World Burlesque Games, the ripping of uniforms in the Star Trek television series, and 'shoefiti' used by gangs to mark territories.

Building on leading theories of dress and the body, from academics including Roland Barthes and Mario Perniolato Ruth Barcan and Erving Goffman, Acts of Undressing is essential reading for students of fashion, sociology, anthropology, visual culture and related subjects. - See more at: http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/acts-of-undressing-9781472596192/#sthash.CY3m7OhU.dpuf

Transforming Type examines kinetic, or moving type, in a range of fields including film, television, typographic animation, and motion graphics, with examples including film and television title sequences, television idents, advertising, interactive poetry and experimental animation. Barbara Brownie addresses different kinds of kineticism and the issues that arise when type transforms itself, challenging the boundaries between type and image. She explores the extent to which existing typography theory can be applied to kinetic media, and attempts to provide a new typology of kinetic typography, enabling readers to define and describe contemporary practice.

"This remarkable book illuminates the rapidly evolving ecosystem of typography. On the pages of this carefully researched study, letterforms come alive as creatures with deep histories and unexpected behaviors." -- Ellen Lupton, Curator, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, USA

"Barbara Brownie's Transforming Type is an exciting and thoughtful look at typography that has been liberated from the printed page. Its range - including historical and contemporary references - is truly impressive. This book will fascinate anyone interested in the power of type and how it can be applied in new and cutting edge ways." -- Andrew Byrom, California State University, USA

Motion branding, in the form of television idents, is frequently described as containing 'motion typography', but this and related terminology is vague or misleading - and reduces all forms of kineticism to simple motion. Onscreen branding often operates more complex temporal behaviours, particularly transformation. Letterforms in logos distort, break apart, or otherwise change until they lose their identity, and adopt a new, alternative identity which may be verbal, pictorial or abstract. Lack of sufficient vocabulary to describe such transformations has forced practitioners to describe their work in terms of previously existing work, thereby limiting the perceived scope of their ideas and the possibility of innovation.

This paper will propose that, within the practice of motion branding, transforming type has been largely neglected by existing theorists and its importance to wider marketing trends overlooked. It will discuss how branding has adapted to incorporate the features of the medium of television, and propose new methods of classification for the associated processes of metamorphosis, construction, parallax and revelation. It will be observed that previous texts on transitional letterforms have tended to focus on changes in global arrangement and in doing so have neglected to recognise the significance of changes that occur at a local level, within individual letterforms. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, with examples including idents and bumpers from Channel 4, Sky, FOX, Five and MTV. New methods of understanding these artefacts will be introduced, with emphasis on how they affect the relationship between broadcaster’s identities and the medium of television.

‘Dressing-up’ has often been seen as a gendered activity. In particular, costuming – the design and creation of costumes – has been viewed as a female pursuit. However, contemporary events and artefacts, particularly those related to fandom, frame dressing-up in contexts that are more acceptable to male audiences. Via cosplay, historical re-enactment, and the personalization of characters in online games such as World of Warcraft, a new generation of men are becoming more engaged with costume. This article will identify contemporary influences on the perception of the wearing and construction of costume, particularly with regards to costume as an expression of masculine ideals. It will discuss the costume as a marker of hypermasculinity, authority or preparedness, and identify how traditionally feminine domestic spaces and activities have been coopted by a new generation of males. It will present domestic activities such as sewing as rights-of-passage on the path towards masculinity.

Fluid typographic forms (letters, numbers and other characters), which transform over time to present new identities, are employed in a new kind of temporal typography. These forms, and the behaviours they exhibit, are most commonly seen in temporal media, including television idents, credit sequences and typographic animation. However, fluidity is dependent upon characteristics that were developed historically, from the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. It has become possible to retrospectively identify the ways that historical developments anticipated fluid transformation in temporal typography. Some categories of fluid behaviour would be impossible if it were not for the concept of the letter as malleable, as a three-dimensional object, or as modular. These characteristics permit processes, or fluid behaviours, through which a new identity is introduced to a changing form. This article demonstrates that these three characteristics are reflected in three historical developments: the use of the transformable grid in the development of Romain du Roi, three-dimensional nineteenth-century typefaces and the modular lettering of Josef Albers, Theo van Doesburg and Bart van der Leck.

As a hybrid of typography and digital animation, kinetic typography has arisen from two distinct histories. Studies of typography take for granted the fixed identity of the printed sign, whereas digital animation frequently features kineticism leading to transformation. It is perhaps for this reason that studies of kinetic typography do not offer adequate exploration of typographic forms that transform and change identity. Though texts on temporal typography offer thorough analysis of temporal typography that moves or is serially presented over time, these studies do not allow for examples such as MPC’s Channel 4 logos, in which pictorial objects transform into a numerical character, or the typographic animation of Komninos Zervos and Dan Waber, in which forms morph between alternative typographic poles. This article will propose that, in order to address the current lack of understanding of transforming type, it is necessary to look beyond the fields of digital animation and typography, to the holographic poetry of Eduardo Kac. Kac identifies, in his holopoetry, forms that escape “constancy of meaning” as they appear to transform between linguistic and pictorial poles. Kac’s terminology may be applied in the examination of “fluid” forms in temporal typography, leading to an understanding of the ways in which transformative behaviours differ from simple motion or elasticity.

In the thirty years since the first appearance of Martin Lambie-Nairn’s ident ‘Round and Back’, Channel 4 has established a reputation for screening idents that are both innovative and pleasingly familiar. While many texts have acknowledged the significance of these artefacts, there has, as yet, been no sufficient exploration into the precise behaviours that make these idents so distinct. This article explores the construction of the Channel 4 logo from independently moving parts, and the alignment of static parts prompted by tracked navigation, showing how these behaviours are made possible by the modularity of the Channel 4 logo. These behaviours are likened to anamorphosis, in which a privileged viewing zone reveals to viewers an alignment of forms, and a fleeting moment in which separate pictorial objects collaborate in the presentation of a more significant numerical configuration.